Deeplinks Blog posts about Free Speech

A panel of eleven Ninth Circuit federal judges will hear oral arguments Monday in a rehearing of Garcia v. Google, a copyright case arising from the notorious "Innocence of Muslims" video that was associated with violent protests around the world. The appellant, Cindy Lee Garcia, argues that she holds a copyright in her five-second performance in the video, and because she was tricked into participating, that the video uses that performance without permission. EFF and many other public interest groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the case, noting (among other concerns) that it is a matter of firmly established law that actors generally do not have a copyright in their performances.

This week EFF joined an amicus brief in support of a college student who was expelled from school for comments he made on Facebook.

Craig Keefe was a nursing student at a public college in Minnesota when he posted several comments on his Facebook profile expressing frustration about certain aspects of the nursing program, including what he considered to be favoritism of female students. Keefe also engaged in a dispute with one of his classmates, calling her a "stupid bitch." While his Facebook profile was publicly viewable, he was off-campus when he posted his comments and did not use any school resources.

Keefe’s Facebook comments were brought to the attention of school administrators, who concluded that the comments constituted "behavior unbecoming of the profession and transgression of professional boundaries."

This week EFF joined an amicus brief in support of a college student who was expelled from school for comments he made on Facebook.

Craig Keefe was a nursing student at a public college in Minnesota when he posted several comments on his Facebook profile expressing frustration about certain aspects of the nursing program, including what he considered to be favoritism of female students. Keefe also engaged in a dispute with one of his classmates, calling her a "stupid bitch." While his Facebook profile was publicly viewable, he was off-campus when he posted his comments and did not use any school resources.

Keefe’s Facebook comments were brought to the attention of school administrators, who concluded that the comments constituted "behavior unbecoming of the profession and transgression of professional boundaries."

In politics, as with Internet memes, ideas don't spread because they are good—they spread because they are good at spreading. One of the most virulent ideas in Internet regulation in recent years has been the idea that if a social problem manifests on the Web, the best thing that you can do to address that problem is to censor the Web.

It's an attractive idea because if you don't think too hard, it appears to be a political no-brainer. It allows governments to avoid addressing the underlying social problem—a long and costly process—and instead simply pass the buck to Internet providers, who can quickly make whatever content has raised rankles “go away.” Problem solved! Except, of course, that it isn't.

For years, pundits and scholars have warned of the implications of social media companies capitulating to foreign governments, handing over user data or censoring content. Facebook’s latest government requests report, released late last week, demonstrates why: as governments grow aware of the fact that stifling speech is as easy as submitting an order to a corporation, the number of those orders will drastically increase.

The latest report shows that Turkey and Pakistan in particular are keen to exploit Facebook’s willingness to respond to legal orders from countries where they are not legally required to do so. While the largest number of censorship requests came from India (where Facebook has a large presence), Turkey and Pakistan weren’t far behind with 1893 and 1773 requests for content removal respectively.